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Diary

Undisguisedly mimicking Oprah Winfrey, Richard and Judy have reinvented themselves as bookworms. Besides launching an Oprah-style book club, the durable duo will host next year’s Nibbies awards (ensuring TV coverage for a famously boozy, licentious event hitherto shunned by the cameras). In the run-up to the night, they will solicit votes on their show for Best Read of the Year. Any number of questions suggest themselves: will a public already asked to vote by BBC2 and W H Smith be feeling “polled out” by spring? Is there any point to a Best Read referendum when the existing Book and Author of the Year Nibbies are quasi- democratically decided by sales, not by some snooty cabal? And will authors and publishers still be able to topple tipsily or snog other people’s squeezes, under R&J’s cameras?

The Big Read is all over bar the shouting with five weeks to go, although there